# Agent workflow reference

[AGENTS.md](../AGENTS.md) and the [RPI charter](../skills/rpi/SKILL.md) direct the
agent to own the authorized outcome through finish. Use the native agent and
shell; the tracker, Git and runtime keep their existing authority.

1. Use the existing intent. Invoke Plan only for missing intent or consequential
   uncertainty. A trivial change needs no Plan, Recall or Learn worksheet.
2. Implement the smallest useful change, repair known defects directly, and
   revise an approach when evidence disproves its assumption within unchanged
   outcome and scope. Changing acceptance needs caller authority.
3. Run cheap discriminating checks while editing, then required integration
   checks. Reserve capacity for finishing, final judgment and needed repairs.
4. Obtain fresh author-distinct final Validate over the exact subject. Same-family
   is default; cross-model is opt-in, with no fixed ten-minute cap. PASS requires
   all acceptance and empty `not_checked`; evidence gaps remain visible.
5. Repair known findings within real bounds and revalidate the changed subject.
   A genuine causal stall admits at most one bounded helper, never a chain.
   Report the outcome and evidence truthfully when complete or actually stopped.

[Memory](../skills/memory/SKILL.md) supplies on-demand recall and separately
budgeted mining/curation over caller-selected reviewed external topic pages.
BD owns work/status/handoffs, Git content, and native/CASS sources episodes.
Learning can update, qualify or remove a rule; no-change is valid. Only later
work establishes benefit. This lean route uses public or already-cleared inputs
and claims no native restricted-source enforcement.

Specialists, anti-ceremony audits, factories and outer-goal guidance are optional.
No new scheduler, command or process ledger is needed. The grandfathered pure
fixed-dispatch adapter is separately described in its own reference.

For exact intent snapshots, subject manifests, evidence storage, scope and
freshness, use [RPI traversal](architecture/rpi-traversal.md) and
[Validate mechanics](../skills/validate/references/mechanics.md). New proof goes
to caller-selected protected external non-Git storage; missing routing does not
permit a workspace fallback. Legacy `.agents/` evidence remains preserved.